The Ties that Bind
by Somnambulista
Summary: Roughly a year after Mission City, Maggie is enlisted to try and help Barricade and Frenzy make it home, but there's a betrayer in the midst. Maggie is put closer to danger than ever before when Barricade's mate returns via Starscream.
1. Discovery

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or caroons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.  
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**Discovery**

It had been a year since the battle had taken place between the Autobots and the Decepticons, and Maggie Madsen had been awarded a comfortable job doing work for the government there in a much more small-time gig than her previous outfit at the NSA. She still flew to Washington DC on a near-monthly basis for analysis and often to aid incoming trainees, but for the most part, life was normal. She had been seeing her boyfriend, Ethan, for nearly six months, and the two lived a non-eventful life in a nice two-story home not far from Sam.

It was one such normal morning that started it all. She woke earlier than usual, and opted not to go back to sleep, but got showered and dressed as usual, all before realizing that it was Saturday. She still had work to do at the office, which she could easily accomplish after hours (given the nature of her clearances, a key to the building hadn't been hard to obtain), and figured she'd run a few errands in the process. She kissed Ethan goodbye and left him sleeping at a bright 6:45 AM, and headed down the stairs to her car for work. When she got to her car, she paused, and rifled through her purse, trying to find her cell phone.

_Funny, I could have sworn I put it in here a few minutes ago_, she thought to herself. The call would have to wait, she supposed. She sighed a little and went back into the house, setting her purse down on the counter. She went straight to where it had been plugged in, but the charger sat alone, and she frowned. After a brief search of the house, she gave up, and decided to head in to work and make the call there. She'd only intended to make sure a few files were in order over in DC, and it wouldn't kill her to wait an hour.

When she got in her car, she dropped her purse in the passenger seat, and her phone slid out. "Well, I'll be damned," she said thoughtfully. She backed out of the driveway and began her usual route to work.

Frenzy, in the meantime, had other plans. He'd been frustrated by this human to no end - first he'd tried to kill her, and now he knew that she was the only one who could help him. That Witwicky boy was all about the Autobots, and from hanging around the house listening to conversations between Maggie and her strange boy-mate, he'd come to the conclusion that she had enough knowledge to help Barricade. When Megatron had been destroyed and the rest of the Decepticons dumped into the ocean, Frenzy and Barricade had been left alone while Starscream fled, though that was nothing new. Now that he and Barricade were all but stranded here while Optimus Prime and his band of merry men ran the show, Frenzy just wanted to get back into space and get somewhere other than Earth, since he didn't really have a place to call home. Cybertron had been wiped out ages ago, so they needed somewhere else to exist away from all this... life.

Maggie payed the phone no attention as she drove, and didn't notice as her little Blackberry Pearl change into a small robotic creature and back. She pulled into the office complex where she worked, and scooped it up, depositing it inside her purse as she made her way inside. While she went to get herself a soda from the vending machine, Frenzy jumped from her bag and ran around her small office, trying to find a good way to communicate with her that wouldn't scare the hell out of her - he'd noticed humans scared rather easily, so he had to play this cool.

He jammed one of his utensils into the tower on her computer, fishing around for what he wanted, and remained hidden under her desk as she came in, sat down, and moved her mouse around to stop her little 'flying toaster' screensaver. Right as she moved the arrow to her document program, her moniter blinked out. When it came back, DOS was open.

"Oh, what now?" she asked, her feminine, distinctly Australian voice breaking the silence. She scanned the screen for error messages.

Frenzy took his chance, and began forcing words onto the screen.

**HUMAN, DO NOT BE ALARMED. I HAVE COME IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE.**

Maggie was quiet for a second, and then she turned, and looked around. "Is this a joke?" she asked aloud.

**THIS IS NOT A JOKE. I AM IN HIDING FROM THOSE THAT YOU CALL THE AUTOBOTS. I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE TO VACATE YOUR PLANET. I DO NOT WISH TO HARM YOU.**

Frenzy wanted to harm her when she stood up, though, and forced himself not to make any noise as he waited for her to search the rest of the floor where her office was, trying to find the source of this prank. When she'd come back to her desk, he tried again.

**I DO NOT WISH TO HARM YOU. I JUST WANT TO LEAVE YOUR PLANET IN PEACE. THE WAR HAS ENDED BETWEEN THE AUTOBOTS AND THE DECEPTICONS. WE HAVE NOTHING LEFT HERE.**

Maggie felt a pit in her stomach as she watched the text on the screen form. _ This can't be a joke. Nobody else knows what those things are called. _ Aloud, she said, "Okay... what do I need to do?" She felt her heart start to beat faster, and she sat down in her office chair, pressing her hands together. Her palms had begun to sweat, and it annoyed her. This always happened when she got scared.

**I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME TO MY PARTNER. THERE, HE CAN INSTRUCT YOU FURTHER.**

"Well, how can I do that if you're in my computer?" she asked, her voice shaking. _This can't be happening to me_, she told herself mentally. She reached for her Sprite at the exact moment that Frenzy crawled from underneath her desk and revealed himself. Maggie screamed and dropped the soda, and Frenzy screamed, his metallic, tingy voice harsh on her ears as he jumped into a chair to escape the spilled drink.

He made a series of noises at her and shook his little metal fists, and Maggie nearly laughed aloud at the sight, but she felt more like crying at the moment. She focused on the overturned beverage, disposing of it and throwing down some paper towels, trying to blot it up with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.

Frenzy made more noises at her. The human was trying to avoid his request! He was growing impatient, and dropped back down into the shape of her phone. ** That ** got her attention. She stopped her cleaning. "Hey!" she shouted angrily. She reached over to snatch her phone, when it made a little ding-dong noise. Maggie had a text message. She opened the phone, and read the screen:

**I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME TO MY PARTNER NOW. HE'S IN A WAREHOUSE BEHIND THE TRAIN YARD. DO ME THIS ONE TASK, HUMAN, AND I WILL LEAVE YOU IN PEACE.**

Maggie looked around again, and then back down at the screen of her phone. "I'm going to be in so much trouble if anyone finds out about this, do you understand that? Why should I risk my tail for you when you nearly ripped Mission City apart and tried to, well, destroy the Earth?" she challenged. The phone was silent, and then another message appeared:

**WE WERE NOT ALONE IN THAT VENTURE, MAY I REMIND YOU.**

She opened her mouth, and then closed it again. He had a point. She didn't know whose idea it was to run the Allspark into the middle of a large city, but it hadn't been a good one. In trying to save billions of lives, they had cost hundreds. The damage control had been nearly impossible, but somehow the government had managed. Maggie realized that while the Decepticons had technically been the villains, the Autobots weren't the perfect portrait of heroes, either.

"Okay," she said softly. "Okay, I'll do this ** one ** thing for you, but that's it. After that, no more taking over my electronics. You leave me alone, and let me try to live a normal life. Or I'll... I'll smash you," she threatened lamely. She didn't really know what she could do, but she'd do something. She'd contact Sam if she had to, he still had the single Autobot with him, and Bumblebee didn't seem keen on the Decepticons if she remembered correctly.

The phone was silent. She gathered her things quickly and headed out of the building, trying to look as normal as possible. She had a feeling that this would be the worst possible decision that she could have made, but really, what choice did she have?


	2. The Thing Is

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or caroons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera.**

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**The Thing Is...**

Maggie could only think about one thing while she drove: How much trouble she could get into right now. She'd done her share of stupid things, but most of them had turned out good results. Hack the school computers? Work for the NSA. Steal a file from the NSA? Save the world. Drink too much one night and have to crash on a friend's couch? Move in with man of dreams. She figured her odds were pretty good, but then again, what goes up...

She was shaken from her cloud of thoughts when her phone leaped up and transformed into Frenzy, who began making noises and pointing his utensils ahead. "Oh, I guess we're here, huh?" she said to him, hitting her blinker and moving into the turn lane. The train yard had been the scene of more than one meeting with the giant robots, and Maggie had her fingers crossed that this didn't seem to hold the same 'super robot death match' qualities that Sam and Mikaela had told her about. She pulled her white Subaru WRX in behind some crates so it wouldn't be seen easily, and got out, nearly being run down by Frenzy as he rocketed passed her and towards one of the large buildings.

"Hey!" she exclaimed for the second time, exasperation with the robot almost overcoming her fear. "Wait, stupid! I can't follow you if you're moving at light speed!" she protested, hurrying after him. The gravel made it hard for her to run, and she wanted to take her shoes off, but she was afraid she'd step on a rusted nail - or worse. _What have I gotten myself into?_ she asked herself silently as she rounded the corner where she'd last seen the little robot.

She gasped. The black S281 Saleen Mustang was parked in the corner of the building, with Frenzy jumping up and down in front of it. She could see strange logos in it even from where she stood, and she knew that those police markings were a farce. "So this is what was so important," she breathed. She walked cautiously towards the duo, watching carefully for any signs of a trap. Sam had told her about this one - the thought of him terrified her. She was forcing her steps, and even then, she fell short of them by about fifteen feet.

Frenzy made waving motions at her, and then looked from her to the Mustang. "I'm not turning back into her phone," he told the Mustang in their native language. "You talk to her."

"Why should I have to talk to her? You got her this far. You do it. I don't want anything to do with her, or any other human," Barricade shot back. To Maggie, the speech was nothing but mechanical sounds, clicks, and high-pitched fragmented noises. It sounded like some sort of distortion, not unlike what she'd heard from them months prior when she'd had to analyze their hacking signals.

"Hey," she said. She didn't know what they were saying, but she had a feeling it was about her. "Hey, guys? I'm still here. What did you need me to do?" she asked, folding her arms. She wanted to get out of here, to go back home and curl up with Ethan.

The pair abruptly stopped their conversation, and she felt both of them staring at her as she stood there impatiently. Frenzy pulled back and kicked the Mustang directly in the tire, and the car squawked its siren back at him in response. There was a moment of pause, and then Frenzy took a few steps back as Barricade transformed.

Maggie felt nauseous as she watched the car become a massive piece of advanced, sentient machinery. She felt her knees weaken, and sat down on the sandy concrete flooring, covering her mouth with her hand. She'd seen it before, but it never got any easier - especially not knowing this was a 'bad guy'. "Oh, my, " was all she managed to say, closing her eyes tightly for a moment. She felt something on her arm, and turned to look at Frenzy as he actually patted her on the shoulder. Concern? she asked herself, looking back up to Barricade as he shifted his weight to better accommodate himself. _Nonsense. These things aren't capable of feelings... are they?_ She didn't feel like she was able to stand up, but she pushed off the ground anyways. To her surprise, Frenzy leaned against her for support.

"As Frenzy might have explained to you, we have no interest in your planet any longer, human," he began, his voice low and booming, sending a chill to Maggie's spine. "We simply want a way to communicate to other Decepticons, to let them know what has happened. We need to let them know that while Megatron has died, we live, and we will be returning to them soon." He paused. "We have discussed at great length on this matter, and we will not harm you."

Frenzy made a loud squawking noise at the massive mechanical being.

" **I** will not harm you," he said, though his voice betrayed some sort of grudging tone that made Maggie uneasy.

"I'm not sure how I can help you do this, though. I mean, I work with computers and stuff, but I'm not... I mean, I can't just hop on a satellite and dial home for you," she protested. She ran her hands through her blonde curls and made a frustrated noise, wishing she had never gotten up.

"I have a transmitter, but it was damaged when Bumblebee and I fought. I can tell you what you need to fix it, but Frenzy and I simply do not have the resources while we are busy trying to stay out of eyes of the Autobots and the humans alike."

Maggie stared at him. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I'll do it, and then you'll go, and I'll never see either of you again, right?" she asked.

"That is correct. We have no wish to be here, as much as you wish us not to be here. The transmitter is inside of the police vehicle I have become. It's disguised as the radio. I will transform back and frenzy will remove it for you. Take it with you and work on it in the confines of your own home - if anyone else is to get ahold of it, our cover would be blown as soon as word reached Prime, or any of his allies." He thought particularly of Ironhide, and shuddered. What he wouldn't give for one face off with that bucket of bolts - but with the transmitter, that would be their only shot off of this rock, and he didn't want to chance it, not even for revenge.

"And you'll stay here? And when I'm done I bring it back, and you go?" she asked. "I'm just trying to be clear, here..." she trailed off. She didn't know what to call him.

"You can call me Barricade, Maggie Madsen," he said. "And we will leave as soon as this task is complete unless something prevents us from doing so." And with that, he dropped back into the form of the Saleen, leaving Maggie and Frenzy to themselves. One door popped open.

"It's just Maggie," she said as Frenzy rushed towards him and began removing the transmitter. She sighed and dusted off her backside as he worked, looking down at her watch. Ethan, how would she explain this thing? She could say she got it from a friend and had to fix it? No, that wouldn't work. She could keep it in her study at the house and tell him it was something from Washington - a black box or something that she had to work on. A decoy, a test subject she was given to challenge her aptitude. _That actually might work_, she thought to herself. Ethan didn't get into her job much. He was a detective, not a computer geek, and certainly not a mechanic. Although it would be hard for her to lie to him, she figured for this, she could manage. Besides, technically, it did involve her job. Just... completely counterproductive to what she'd spent the last few months fixing.

Frenzy lugged the transmitter back to her, and Barricade hadn't been kidding - it looked exactly like what a radio might. It was advanced, to be certain, but appeared at a glance as nothing more than an expensive piece of electronic equipment. That would be enough to keep Ethan away, she decided. "Okay," she nodded, taking it from the smaller robot. "I'll try my best to get this thing working, but I can't promise I'll have it back to you tomorrow. I will need to dedicate several hours to it, just by looking at some of it," she said, eying several damaged wires. "Can you give me a week?"

Barricade shut his door, and backed into the corner. He shut off all his lights. Frenzy ran over to him and put a large tarp across his body, and Maggie laughed in spite of herself. "I guess that's a yes," she said. As she turned to leave, Frenzy almost followed after her, but thought better of it. It wasn't until she was gone by a few hours than did Barricade turn to him.

"Perhaps you should watch over her and make sure no other humans interfere," he suggested.


	3. Complications

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or caroons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera.The only characters I own are the originals!  
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**Complications**

The ride back had been thankfully uneventful, although Maggie had attempted to scan every inch of her car for that little mechanical thing, who had text-messaged her to tell her his name was 'Frenzy' and that she should stop calling him hateful names, which she had been doing up until that point, albeit under her breath. It disturbed her how much they could sense, feel, see, hear... everything. She felt so small and insignificant next to them, and it made her angry that they knew it - she was pretty sure that they liked it, too, and the sense of smugness hit her when she realized they were now relying on her for help. How degrading it must have been.

She carried the transmitter safely under one arm as she walked towards the house, and stopped short of the front door. Ethan was still home. How would she explain this? They'd fought quite a few times about her bringing her work home. He'd been guilty of it, too, but Maggie often caught the brunt of the argument and caved easily when it came to her boyfriend. She turned down the stone sidewalk and ran around to the garage, scooting passed his car to pick up a few tools and throw them into the small toolbox she would need. Soldering iron, small screw drivers, and an assortment of wires and other pint-sized tools that seemed to be more on call for a job this delicate in nature. She left her purse sitting on the workbench and carried the toolbox carefully, pushing open the side door to the house from the garage and creeping in through the utility room.

The washing machine was running, which was a feat all in its own. _Wow_, she thought to herself,_ I must've done something right. He never cleans. Come to think of it, he never does a lot around the house._ She frowned. Now was not the time to be focusing on the flaws of her boyfriend. Nobody was perfect, least of all her, especially at the moment. She stuck her head around the door that lead out to the kitchen area, and when she determined the coast was clear, she headed through the dining room and up the stairs, straight for her study. She managed to get there without seeing Ethan, although as soon as she set the transmitter down on her just-cleaned workspace, she heard his voice calling her.

"Hold on a sec, hon!" she shouted, grabbing a paper towel to wipe her hands free of grime from the device. She threw it into the wastebasket and flipped the light off on her way out, locking the door behind her.

She heard footsteps coming from the bend in the hall towards the bedroom, and hurried towards them. Ethan hated being made to wait. She nearly ran into him as she rounded the corner, and squealed in surprise as she stopped short of smashing into his chest.

"Hey!" she cheered. She was a terribly liar. She already looked guilty.

Ethan, fortunately, had other things on his mind. "Hey, I was going to ask what the hell you were doing this morning, but I was too tired. Did you go into work for something?" he asked, his hazel eyes studying her carefully. He folded his arms. Ethan wasn't a bad guy, he just wanted to make sure Maggie was okay - and sometimes he obsessed a little. It was normal.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot it was Saturday until I pretty much hit the driveway. I did manage to get some last minute paperwork done for the Secretary, though," she idled, smiling blithely. "What're you about to go do?"

Ethan stared at her for a minute. He smiled, then, a strange sort of crooked look. "I started a load of laundry, but now you can take it over. I got called in to work. Evidently there's some extra stuff at the station they need a hand with, and I volunteered thinking you'd be gone all day." He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the nose, something Maggie absolutely abhorred. "Why don't you take something out for dinner so when I get back we can try to salvage the rest of our day?"

"Sure, okay," she said, blinking. Since when was she the housewife? It was nice of him to assume she didn't have anything else to do today, but she blew strands of hair out of her face as he brushed passed her to go get his shoes, and decided she'd use that as the perfect opportunity to try and get some progress done with the transmitter. When he had gone, she threw on a pair of ripped pants and a plain white tank top, coiled her hair into a bun, and then set to work on the strange device.

"God," she said aloud in the quiet study, "the technology on this thing is amazing." She reached over and pushed her mouse, then dragged a few MP3s into her WinAmp, and started up some music so she didn't go deaf in the silence. She tugged down the protective glasses she'd been using as she experimentally soldered a few of the wires, trying to see how well they would form. It was some sort of metal she hadn't worked with yet, and she didn't think she was getting them hot enough to be able to splice them right. She sighed and set the tools down, resting her elbows on the desk as she tried to think of something she could do.

She needed to get back into contact with them - Frenzy, most likely. He had a plethora of tools at his disposal. She'd called him a can opener before, and that had gotten her some noises she'd interpreted to be rude, but she ignored it. Now she regretted it, because she didn't think he'd be as willing to comply - at least not without some amount of bribery involved. She pushed away from her desk in her chair and stood, still unsure of how to contact them.

She'd have to go back to the train yard, she guessed. This didn't make her very happy, but she'd do what she had to in order to get this over with as quickly as possible. She'd not made much physical progress but she was already beginning to understand that the project she'd undertaken was an easy one. She just needed the right tools to do it with. She grabbed an over shirt and headed back down through the house, forgetting to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer for the moment. She backed out of the driveway and headed for the train yard. Again.

She got to the first stop sign in her neighborhood when Frenzy jumped out of her purse, having taken the guise of her phone yet again. She screamed when he began making noises at her, and then swung her fist down at him angrily in reaction to her surprise.

Frenzy shook another metallic fist at her, and then pointed back at the house.

"Well, you were who I was trying to find anyways, Frenzy," she said angrily. "Don't be mad at me because you are incapable of hiding in a place that doesn't involve my personal things." She turned the car around and went back to the house, lecturing the robot the short distance back.

"And another thing," she said as she slammed her door shut - but Frenzy suddenly dropped down into the shape of her phone as Ethan's black SUV pulled alongside the curb in front of the house.

"Hey, babe, where you going?" he asked casually, walking towards her. He wore a suit and tie, as per protocol, and took his dark sunglasses off smoothly as he walked. He stood uncomfortably close to her as she reached down to pick up her phone, and reached out, snatching it from her before she could put it in her pocket. "Who you talking to?" he asked, his voice but a purr.

"Nobody! I was going to the store to pick up some things for dinner, and I had to come back because I forgot my phone. Turns out, the little buggar was in my pocket the whole time. Fell out when I got out of the car," she said with a laugh. She reached for the phone, but he held it just out of her reach, and then flipped it open and scrolled through her text messages.

Frenzy had been good enough to delete them all out of her 'phone' he possessed, but it didn't stop Ethan from wondering. He caught her by the arm lightly, and applied just enough pressure to elicit a squeak from her. "Are you lying to me, Maggie?" he asked carefully.

Maggie gritted her teeth as he tightened down on her arm. To anyone passing by, it looked like nothing but a casual touch, but Ethan had perfected the art of backing Maggie into a corner without leaving much evidence behind. "No, Ethan, and **stop**, you're hurting me," she hissed, yanking away from him. She glared at him, and in the back of her head, she wondered again why she had started putting up with this. _Oh, right. Job stress. I just have to wait it out. He did warn me he gets a little strung out. I'm just over-reacting,_ she told herself. Somewhere in her stomach, though, it didn't feel like over-reaction. It felt like something else.

He let go of her suddenly, and ran his fingers through his brown hair. "Whatever," he said angrily. "I'll be back around six. We'll just talk then, okay?" And his demeanor changed again - from irritated to calm. He reached forward to take her arm again, this time to pull her into a kiss, and then abruptly let her go. "Love you, sweetheart," he said. He walked to the garage, picked up the six pack of soda he'd forgotten to bring with him for he and his partner, and went back to the SUV, leaving Maggie standing in the driveway, arms folded tightly.

It had been all Frenzy could do not to attack the man when he put his hands on Maggie. She was supposed to be helping them, and he was interfering. That alone should constitute enough of a reason to erase his miserable existence from the Earth, but Maggie was putting off an unusual level of things besides simply fear or distress, and so Frenzy had waited and watched, not wanting to blow his cover, and hers. He transformed again, and hopped inside the car, sitting down and watching her carefully.

Maggie slowly slid down the right side of the shirt sleeve where Ethan had grabbed her, and ran her fingers across the purple bruise forming on her arm. She winced as she touched it, and then quickly straightened her shirt when she felt the robot's eyes on her. "What are you staring at?" she snarled. "Come on, don't just sit there. You want off this rock? Then let's go." She turned and stormed back into the house.

Frenzy stood there for a moment before shutting her car door and obediently following her. He made a mental note to inform Barricade of these things immediately on his return, and was confident that the other, much larger Decepticon would not approve of Maggie's treatment when she was their last ditch effort at getting away.


	4. Team Player

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or caroons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only things I own are the original characters! **

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**Team Player**

Ethan Lions was a patient man, or so he thought. It wasn't until he'd been assigned to Maggie's case that he began to slip into the routine that his father had once displayed. He had always liked to be in control, but with this particular case, it was hard. He had to play things smoothly, catering to the useless needs of a girl who was barely old enough to drink, waiting for the right moment. It seemed though, as he drove back to the station, that he'd finally found that exact moment. His phone was in his hand, pressed to his ear as he sat at a stoplight.

"Hey, it's Lions," he said.

"What've you got for me?" the voice at the other end said.

"I think your plan is finally going to pay off. I'm almost positive they've made contact with her," he said. He didn't even hesitate to turn Maggie in to Sector 7. The project had never been destroyed, it had only evolved into something else, something more... severe. They were well aware that the Autobots were still on Earth and that they had called in for others like them, and that was fine - most of them were more than happy to aid the U.S. Government with technological breakthroughs and knowledge, but the Decepticons could not remain hidden forever, and those were the test subjects that they'd been looking for. Megatron was simply a bad idea, but now that they knew what they were up against...

"Great," the voice at the other end said. "You sick of being undercover yet?"

Ethan was silent for a moment. He didn't love Maggie, not at all. He found her to be annoying most of the time with her strange technobabble that she'd slip into from time to time. It was one of the reasons he'd begun to limit her ability to talk about work around him. He didn't care about half of the shit she did - the only part he wanted to know was what she wasn't telling him. He had strict orders to watch her, and playing the role of the boyfriend had been easy, except that all of the emotional attachments that came with a relationship eventually became things that were harder to overlook. They'd been together long enough that he had developed feelings for her, but in a twisted sort of way. Even he knew he treated her unfairly. What he didn't understand is why she'd never left. He supposed he was buried deep enough in her head that she was happier to succumb to his demands than see him leave.

It was strange that as smart as Maggie was, she had never recognized the relationship's rapid deterioration. Ethan hadn't ever outright hit her, but he'd scared the living shit out of her a few times. Beyond that, he told her what to do an awful lot, even he could admit it. _I guess I'm just that good_, he thought to himself.

"Yes and no. I have to tell you, she's a real wildcat when she wants to be, but she's just too damn smart for my taste," he finally answered. Jameson - the man on the other line - didn't need to know precisely how their relationship worked, and so he left the details alone.

Jameson laughed. "Yeah, her file is interesting. She's a lucky girl - every bad decision she's ever made has made her advance in big ways. I guess this one won't, though. Get me solid proof and we'll bring her in for questioning."

Ethan pulled into his parking spot at work. "Okay, I'll see what I can do." He hopped out of the black GMC that he'd been in, and put his phone away, tipping down his sunglasses at the vehicle. "You get all that?" he asked.

The SUV responded by shutting the door. The GMC Topkick next to it suddenly started, and Ironhide backed carefully out of his spot, and headed out of the lot. He had much to tell his comrades about what the brilliant Maggie had been up to.

Ethan leaned against his now non-sentient SUV and sighed. A long time ago, part of him might've felt bad about doing this, but when the government had contacted him, knowing that he and Maggie had only had a few drinks a few times, the money they'd offered him to keep tabs on her had been enough to push any morals he'd had aside. He'd been able to keep his life normal with the exception of an act he'd had to throw on around the blonde, which was fast becoming a tired routine. He couldn't honestly say he loved her - she was a job. Once this was over, he'd ask for a transfer to somewhere far away where he could sit on a desk job and be the guy who has enough money to quit but stays because he'd get too bored if he didn't.

He thought back to when he'd grabbed her earlier, and made a note to get her some flowers on the way home. That usually seemed to do the trick. He'd been an asshole to her, but she just made him so mad sometimes with her innocent act. He grunted a little as he considered trying to be a better boyfriend to her. _Why bother? She's going to fuck up soon enough, and then I can get the hell out of here_.

It seemed like a good enough plan. He locked his SUV and headed into the station.


	5. Favours to the Unfavourable

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or cartoons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.**

* * *

**Favours to the Unfavourable**

Starscream was lucky to have escaped with his life. The words of his fellow Decepticons had rolled off of his back for many millenia, but that last jib from Megatron had finally caused him to have his fill. Why didn't they see him as anything except a failure? He was the only one still alive, as far as he knew, and that obviously meant that he hadn't been a failure as all. In fact, Megatron was the failure in this equation as far as he was concerned, and it was the comfort of that thought that carried him through the stars, where he stopped on a glistening hunk of rock called Callisto to rest for a while. One of Jupiter's moons, it was as good a spot as any to relax for a while while he transmitted a call to see if any Decepticons were nearby.

He was leaning lazily on a large chunk of ice when he picked up a familiar frequency, and he launched himself up in surprise, splintering the resting spot as he crashed down upon it. He hissed into the transmitter in his native language tidings of ill wishes, and wasn't surprised to find the sentiment returned.

"It's nice to know you were the remaining survivor. Tell me, did you abandon them all and hide your head in the sand, or did you turn tail on them and give them up to Optimus yourself?" came the venomous outpour across the airwaves, in a voice that, in Cybertronian, was very much belonging to a female.

"Silence, you second-rate whore," he snarled, standing to pace. If other Decepticons were to believe that he had betrayed Megatron... well... his following was enough that Starscream had better odds of survival back on Earth in the care of the Autobots. "I'll not listen to your slander another second. You should play nice, anyways," he crooned, taunting her.

"And why is that?" she asked, her voice dripping with hatred. There was a moment of static as the drifting Aftermath was crossed by a few asteroids, and she tapped her own transmitter to make sure she was still on. "Just why, precisely, should I not gut your processors out as soon as I find you, you scum-sucking rodent?" she quizzed him.

Starscream laughed then, a brittle, harsh sound. "If you ever want to see your precious Barricade again, I suggest you learn to get along well with others, Aftermath. Very well, indeed." That ought to have shut her up, he thought to himself, laughing again at the abrupt silence on the line.

Satisfied with himself, he ended the transmission, and began trudging around on the moon again, trying to motivate himself to fly further out. He knew where several of the Decepticons had taken up refuge, and he was more than willing to meet with them and tell them of his tales, although he'd put a slightly different spin on them. _Probably make myself the heroic survivor of a bloodbath_, he mused to himself as he kicked rocks around. He was too lost in his own pathetic ego to notice anything around him.

That was probably better for Aftermath, anyways. She hit the atmosphere hard and cold, decelerating at a disgusting rate. She'd made it a point to lock onto his exact coordinates, and since this place wasn't as heavy an environment as other planets were, she was easily landed without being noticed. While she watched Starscream kick about in place and mutter to himself tales of imagined greatness, she took her opportunity to strike. It wasn't much effort on her own part to take him down - Aftermath was not as large as Starscream, but she was twice as mean. She'd gotten shafted out of Megatron's ranks when he'd deemed her too much of a distraction, and she blamed Starscream primarily for it.

"DECEPTICON BITCH!" he screeched, sliding with a crash into a large crater made eons before their arrival. He leaped to his feet and swung fast, catching Aftermath square in the facial area, sending her sprawling on her back several feet away. He stood and straightened himself, before simply aiming his rather large blaster at her.

"Don't move, or I'll make sure you stay forgotten," he threatened.

Aftermath was trying to sit up when he'd called his threat to her, and she froze in place. He hated her enough that he might actually do it, and out here in the stars, there would be nobody to witness it. He was if nothing else an opportunist, and for that she had to mentally chide herself for not being more careful. She remained very still as he walked around her, checking for weapons. Finally, after a few moments, she spoke.

"Is he alive?" she demanded.

Starscream grunted. "Wouldn't you like to know?" he said, deliberately kicking dirt and ice on her as he shuffled back to stand in front of her. He hadn't yet lowered his weapon.

She exhaled angrily. "Just tell me, Starscream. You owe me that much, don't you think?" she said. It was the wrong choice of words.

Starscream screeched again and fired twice directly next to her, causing her to roll onto her side and shield herself with a large, mechanical arm. He kicked angrily at her back, satisfied when she made a pained noise. "Bitch!" he shouted. "Don't you **ever** talk about what **I** owe **you**! You're the entire reason that Megatron hates me, or have you forgotten? You're the one who cost me his faith!"

Aftermath seethed. Starscream's inability to accept responsibility for his own actions was growing old, fast. She remembered her hatred for him anew, and said nothing as he continued to rave and rant at her blindly.

Sinking into her own thoughts and tuning him out, she remembered that she had only told Megatron the truth when he'd asked why their mission had failed. Starscream was a horrible leader, and she'd had to undertake more than she was able to in order to try and complete it. She'd failed, yes, but she'd failed at something that was not even her decision to make. Due to his ineptitude, Starscream was punished severely, and in turn told Megatron that she and Barricade's relationship had become unacceptable and unbecoming of members of his command.

She'd only seen Barricade infrequently then, and when he'd gone to Earth in search of the AllSpark and she'd fled with the rest of the Decepticons, she'd expected never to see him again. She owed all of this upheaval to Starscream, and she didn't intend to let him just prance around like a victorious peacock because nobody was here to tell him any different. But if Barricade was alive... it was worth a few precious moments of sanity.

"Okay, Starscream. It was my fault. Are you happy?" she asked, defeated. "Now please, tell me where he is," she pleaded. She hated to beg. She was a proud, beautiful Decepticon female, and begging was beneath her. But she had no choice, not if she wanted to find Barricade.

Starscream did something that could only have been described as a smirk, and lowered his weapon. "Very well, Aftermath. But before I tell you where he is, what precisely are you prepared to do for me in return?"


	6. Friends

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or cartoons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.**

* * *

**Friends**

Maggie sat on the floor of her study with the transmitter firmly in her hands as Frenzy tugged madly at one of the plates that had melted to the other. She was confident with enough pressure he could wiggle them loose enough for her to get her soldering iron between them, but they weren't having much success. She could have had him cut it, but then she'd run the risk of not being able to bolt it back together. The metal was resistant and very hard to cut into, and that posed problems for her when it came to putting things back together when the bolts had been sheared off and new holes needed to be tapped.

"Come on, you tin can, pull harder!" she shouted, aggrevated that Frenzy was such a failure at this endeavour. He didn't seem to be putting much effort into this at all, and she was suspecting that he was there more to watch her progress than actually help.

On the name calling, Frenzy simply released the device, letting Maggie smack herself in the face with it. She let out a muffled string of curse words and then threw the box at him, hitting him square in the head as she covered her hand with her mouth. Frenzy shook himself off and examined her with his little optics, surprised to see that she was bleeding. He hadn't meant for THAT to happen.

"No, stay away from me, you shit," she warned, waving him away with a pair of bolt cutters that she held in her hand as a protective measure, not that it would've mattered. Frenzy was armed with missiles and machine guns if he wanted them, so he had nothing to fear from the cutters. It was more the threat from the docile human Maggie that bothered him.

He made a noise able to be described only as a sigh, and scampered across the room to pick up the transmitter and expect it for damages as Maggie picked herself up off the floor and headed to the bathroom. She let loose another string of explicatives as she saw the split on her lip, and stormed back into the study, flinging the cutters at Frenzy, who had to duck and dodge with the transmitter to avoid being hit again.

"Look what you did to my face, you shit!" she screamed angrily. She had lost all of her patience with him. "First Ethan, now you. I'm never going to get anything done when you people just keep FUCKING with me!" she roared. She actually had tears in her eyes, and Frenzy sensed a high level of distress coming from her as she stomped around the study, grabbing a few tools and cramming them into her toolbox.. She wiped her eyes, willing herself not to cry. She just needed to take a deep breath and relax, which she attempted several times as Frenzy cowered under the desk, holding the transmission device close to his body to protect it from any impact.

"I need to go back to see Barricade. I have to get a few measurements for the new bracket. The one that came off of this is trashed. I need to fit him for a new bracket, plus I need to make sure you didn't warp that thing when you smashed me in the face with it," she said, glaring. "Come on."

She turned and left the room, with Frenzy following close behind, cradling the device. He was worried that she was really going to tell Barricade he hit her with it. He was just playing with her, he hadn't meant to hurt her. He almost changed into her phone as he climbed inside the car, moving to the backseat as she directed him with an angry index finger, but it seemed to piss her off even more when he did that, so he just remained silent. He wondered why he wanted her approval so much, but he supposed he'd never come into contact with a human that didn't fear him right away. Well, she had at first, but it seemed like she had too much else going on to even be bothered with fear.

He rode in silence as she drove back to the train yard, another thing she wasn't happy about. She had a full tank of gas when she'd left the house in the morning, and now it was sitting at three-quarters. Gas was expensive and she had to use the high grade, so it didn't bode well for her bank account, especially not when she wasn't getting paid for this task. Alternatively, she could actually be fired and imprisoned for a very long time, she was certain, if not pummeled by the Autobots should they ever learn of this.

She didn't even notice the black truck behind her at the light, and neither did Frenzy as he sulked. Both of them were too lost in their own separate whirlwinds of thought, and it was fortunate for Ironhide that it was so, because Maggie's vehicle was faster than the truck's capabilities, and he'd hate to have lost them. As she turned into the train yard, he drove passed, choosing to store this information along with the previous bit concerning Ethan and Sector 7 to himself. It was best not to alert the others yet. Bumblebee was close enough by Maggie during the evenings that she couldn't sneak off without his knowledge - she had to drive right by Sam's house to leave the neighborhood, although Sam was often gone, so it was still possible. He'd hash out the details later - for now, he had more spying to accomplish.

Maggie got out of the car, nearly locking Frenzy inside as she picked her way through the gravel into the large, open warehouse. It was easier this time around with tennis shoes, but she still hated it. She picked a rock out of her shoe while she waited for Frenzy to figure out how to open her door, and by the time he had come into the general warehouse space, she was already almost by Barricade's side.

"Listen," she said, pulling off the tarp. The parking lights of the Mustang flicked on, letting her know non-verbally that he was coherent. "I need to take a few measurements, and make sure this still fits properly. Can you let me do that?" she asked.

Barricade opened the driver's side door of the car, and as Maggie climbed in, he focused his attention on Frenzy.

"What happened to her face?" he asked in Cybertronian, his tone neutral.

"I accidentally hit her with the transmitter. But look at her arm!" Frenzy exclaimed, quick to try and shift the blame to someone else. "Her boy-mate marked her!" Frenzy clammoured over to Maggie as she reached out for the transmitter, and handed it to her carefully.

"Stop talking about me, you two," she warned, gently sliding the transmitter back into place. "Hmm... this is going to be more difficult than I thought. It looks like the structure was warped worse than I previously had considered. I'm going to have to fabricate one hell of a pretty bracket for this to work, but I think I can manage," she said softly, mostly to herself, though she had the complete attention of both Decepticons.

"I wish I could meet a nice Decepticon who cared that much about electronics," Frenzy said wistfully, and Barricade laughed in response.

"I said stop!" Maggie called from inside the car. She climbed back out. "I've figured out when you two say 'she' and 'her', but I can't imitate the noise. I do know, however, that it's incredibly rude to refer to someone in the third person when they're standing right next to you," she chided, shutting Barricade's door.

The Decepticon transformed almost instantly, and Maggie stepped aside with a gasp. "I'll never get used to that," she mused, backing away to give him some room.

He squatted down so he could get as close to eye level as he could with her, though he didn't reach out to try and touch her. He was a great deal larger than she was, and he didn't want to risk making her damage any worse.

"What happened to your face?" he asked.

Maggie looked sidelong at Frenzy, and then back at Barricade. "We were trying to figure something out with the transmitter, and Frenzy let go before I was ready for him to. He didn't mean for it to hit me, though," she added quickly. She smiled a little at him. "I don't think he did, anyways. He didn't seem to take any pleasure from it." At least, she hoped not.

"Very well, I will accept that answer. Now, how about the bruises on your arm? Also Frenzy?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. He had a way with his questions that made Maggie uncomfortable, and made her not want to answer him at all. She couldn't lie to something that big, though, so she stood in a heavy silence before she finally answered.

"They were also an accident. My boyfriend caught my arm today a little too swiftly. I'm anemic, so I bruise easily. That's all," she said with a laugh. She wondered if they bought her story.

"Unacceptable answer. If he puts his hands on you again while you are in our service, we will remove him from existance," he said sharply, putting in his final decision on the matter of Ethan's attitude towards Maggie.

She stammered something, but lost all reason for a moment and fell silent. She finally managed to work up the courage to say something, though. It never took too long. "Because I need to finish this?" she asked carefully.

Barricade considered this a moment. "Yes. And because Frenzy likes you."

The small robot made a loud noise that could have easily been, "WHAT?"

Barricade grunted. "And I like you. You do not offend my eyes, Maggie Madsen. You are the only human who is not offensive to me by mere existance, and thus, you are favourable."

"It's just Maggie," she said, though she was trying to process the information he'd given her. "So... we're friends? I mean, you won't kill me in my sleep?" she asked, confused.

Barricade started a little, and then stared at her increduously. "Kill you in your sleep? Humans are so strange," he mused. "If I wanted to kill you, Maggie, I would have done it long ago. If this is the word that you feel approproate, friends, than so be it. We are friends." He paused. "And you need to finish the transmitter so we can go home."

He sure had a way with words. "Yeah, I get it," she said. She scooped up the transmitter as Frenzy handed it out to her. "Come on, Frenzy. Let's call it a night. I'll go buy this stuff first thing tomorrow and we can figure it out then." She held out her hand.

He was confused for a moment, and then realized she was telling him to turn back into her phone. He did so, jumping off the ground in the process, and landed in her small palm.

"Hey Barricade," she said as she began to leave the warehouse, "I think you need to get out for a while. Get some sun. Why don't you cruise around? Nobody is going to find you here."

The Decepticon, who had already changed back into the form of the Mustang, revved once at her and backed up into his corner again.

"Just a suggestion," she said, shrugging and turning back around. She headed with Frenzy to the car, and set out for home, leaving Barricade to his own designs. They pulled out of the lot and drove passed the black GMC truck that had been parked a block away without a second thought.


	7. Nobody's Real

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or cartoons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.**

* * *

**Nobody's Real**

Maggie got back late enough that Ethan had beaten her home. "Shit," she hissed to herself, getting out of her Subaru. She put Frenzy into her back pocket and grabbed the transmitter. She didn't even know what she was going to tell him, and for a moment hesitated. She felt like leaving it in the car, but then she'd have to go get it later and he'd just ask more questions. She could always lie and say it was for work.

Her heart was pounding as she opened the door, and she looked around before entering the foyer fully, transmitter tucked under one arm, despite it having the general misleading appearance of a ball bearing. Basically, the thing was heavier than it looked. She closed the door softly, and sighed as she heard the shower running. Taking the opportunity, she darted into her office and deposited it on her desk, and then shut and locked the door behind her. She hated hiding things from him, but he'd had a bad reaction to her earlier that day, and it made her not want to step on any toes for the evening.

Maggie remembered a time when their relationship really had been perfect. She still thought of it as perfect most of the time, and sometimes she got a little down about how certain things went, but overall, she tried to take a positive approach to it, as with everything else. _Shake it off_, she told herself, heading back down the stairs to start dinner. To her surprise, it was already on the table, and there was a fresh bouquet of flowers with a note that said 'Sorry' written on it in Ethan's handwriting. She smiled to herself.

"See, he's not all that bad," she mused to herself, smelling the flowers as she went to find a vase for them. While she was fishing one out of a cabinet, Ethan emerged into the kitchen, and gave her a smile.

"Hey, hon. Sorry about earlier. Work is stressing me out a lot. I didn't mean to grab you like that, and it won't happen again," he said. He gave her a smile that was forced on his end, but Maggie didn't seem to pick up on it.

"It's fine, Ethan. I know you didn't mean to. We all get a little stressed," she said, accepting his apology by kissing him on the cheek as she brushed passed him to the table. "I'm famished, can we eat now, or do I need to go get all prettied up first?" she asked jokingly. He certainly was dressed nicely, pretty much like he did when he went out - button down, nice jeans, gel in his hair. Maggie wondered what was up.

"Nah, it's fine. I'm going out with a few of the guys in a few hours. Someone's retirement, which means free drinks at O'Tooles, and that is fine by me," he said, holding up his hands. "I know I said we'd try to spend some time together, but it's sort of mandatory fun."

Maggie shrugged a little as she set the silverware out for the two of them. "Not a big deal. I've got some work I need to catch up on," she replied. She shook her head as he rolled his eyes. "Hey, it's not like I'll be doing anything else. The last time I went out was when Mikaela turned eighteen, and even then, we didn't really party too much."

"Well, whatever, it isn't a big deal," he said, sitting down. "Come on, let's eat."

Dinner went well, or so Maggie thought, and Ethan even enveloped her into a passionate hug and kiss combination before he left. She couldn't be sure, but something seemed like it was... off. He gave her a strange look as he went to the door, something she couldn't really explain. As she sat in her study later on with Frenzy, writing notes furiously on her notepad about the transmitter as she examined it, she spoke.

"It was like... the same look he gave me before he had to go to a huge bust. Like he was never going to see me again. Do you know how unnerving that is, really?" She looked up at Frenzy.

The robot shifted uncomfortably, and looked back down at the wires he was soldering.

"Yeah, I guess not," she replied. "You're a shitty conversationalist, you know that?" she said good-naturedly, pushing back in her chair. She got up and stretched, wandering around the study to work her legs out. "So, Barricade and you got stuck here, huh? What about the third one, where'd he go? I didn't ever even catch his name. Starlight? I think I heard Optimus Prime call him something, but I don't remember."

Frenzy looked up at her again, and then made a motion with his hands that looked like a plane taking off and going straight up.

"Ah. Back into outer space. That's... great. He seems like a real team player, not even to come looking for you two. I guess that's why you're still stuck here, huh?" she asked, turning to look at him as she leaned on her desk.

Frenzy shrugged a little, and then paused. He made a bunch of metallic noises, and then shook his fist.

"Maybe you're not interested in him coming back so much," she concluded.

The robot shook his head firmly negative, and then held the wires out to her. "Done," he said. It came out in a strange static sound.

"Oh, great. I think this might be as much progress as I can manage tonight, little guy. I'm tired enough as it is. I'm afraid I'll wire something up wrong." She took the wires from him and set them on her desk, and then walked to the window again.

By the time Maggie had realized that Ethan's SUV was in the driveway, along with two more parked along the street, it was too late. She turned to tell Frenzy to run, but the robot was hit with a tazer, effectively stunning his circuitry as Jameson and Ethan came bursting into the room.

"NO!" she screamed, diving at the robot as he dropped to the ground, twitching. He was definitely not dead, but his system was completely scrambled. Before she made it, Ethan intercepted her, taking her sideways to the ground in an impressive tackle. Maggie kicked at him furiously as Jameson walked around the desk and picked up the transmitter.

"So, this is what they've employed your use for, huh, Madsen? I'm sure the Secretary of Defense will be thrilled to know you've been aiding the enemy. Oh, I'm sorry, did you think we didn't know? Silly girl. We were only waiting for one of them to break down and contact you. They all come out of hiding eventually." He smiled glibly at her.

Maggie struggled against Ethan as he whipped out a pair of handcuffs. "Just stay still, Maggie. I'll make this as painless as possible," he said under his breath to her.

"Fuck you, Ethan!" she screamed. "How long? How long have you been planning this?" she demanded as he wrenched her into a standing position. Two more men had come in and were moving Frenzy into a large box that looked something like the one she'd seen at the Dam.

"Long enough, Maggie. No more questions, okay? You're only going to hurt yourself," he said, his tone somewhat dry.

"Long enough? What does LONG ENOUGH mean?" she shouted. He began dragging her out of the room, Jameson following with the transmitter in hand.

"Maggie, for someone so intelligent you are incredibly stupid. Ethan was assigned to you shortly after you met. Do you think he stayed around because he liked your cooking? Please," Jameson said, sauntering behind them at a pleasant pace.

Maggie froze in place and nearly had her arm yanked out of socket by Ethan as he dragged her along. "What?" she asked. She felt a sinking in her stomach, a deep hole of anger and sadness opening up wide, swallowing all of her logic and reason with it as it came. Everything suddenly was happening in slow motion. She could hear Jameson telling the other men to "Wrap it up" and watched as they went down the stairs with Frenzy in the box. She looked back up at Ethan with a pained expression on her face.

Ethan met her with dead eyes. "Let's just drop the act, Maggie. I'm Special Agent Ethan Lyons, with Sector 7. I was enlisted by Jameson not long after we met and I agreed to babysit you for a very large sum of money and a definite promotion in my future. I never had any feelings for you," he concluded, though he felt a little pang in his chest as he said it. He did like Maggie, but the money was just worth more than her.

Maggie stared at him, and then her face contorted into an angry expression, and she spit directly into his eyes. "I hope you fucking choke on your own blood," she snarled. She struggled as he yanked her towards the stairs, and as Jameson passed them, she heard him laughing. That was quite enough for Maggie, and she quickly weighed her options.

Right now, she was as good as dead. She was going to be interrogated and probably killed, and Frenzy was going to be used for some sick experiments, she was certain. Barricade, if they ever found him, would probably be turned over to the Autobots, who would no doubt do something heinous to him. Had he actually hurt her? Not that she could recall - in fact, he'd asked for her help in promises of leaving in peace and never returning. So had Frenzy. Maggie had no choice. She had made a promise to help them, and she was going to do it.

She swung both legs up and planted them firmly on the wall as they hit the stairwell, pushing off with all of her weight. She came crashing back onto Ethan, and sent both of them down the stairs, taking everyone else down with them. One of the men carrying Frenzy was knocked unconscious, as was Ethan, but Jameson was struggling to get up under the pile of people. Maggie jumped up, thanks to Ethan for cushioning her descent, and kicked Jameson in the face as hard as she could. She dropped down and tried to pull the keys out of his pocket, but the other man carrying Frenzy punched her hard enough to knock her up and over on her side.

He grabbed her fiercely, picking her up and slamming her into the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Maggie fell into the fetal position, gasping for air. Everything around her was spotted red and black, and when the man came over to her, her only reaction was to roll over and kick as hard as she could. It turned out to be the right choice - she connected with his crotch and sent him backwards, howling in pain.

Maggie rolled to her knees and sat up, kicking the set of keys away from Jameson's body. She ran to them, dropping down and slipping her feet through her arms, trying to finagle the cuffs off of her. She managed to get one undone before she heard one of the men's radios squawk to life.

"Reno, do you need backup in there?" it buzzed.

_Oh, shit_, Maggie thought. She had very little time for this. She ran to the box where Frenzy was and tried every key on the chain until she got into the lock, popping it open. She reached in and grabbed him, yanking him out. "Hang in there, tin can," she said softly. She was surprised at how light he was - the metal he was made of had some of the properties she'd seen with titanium, but it was so much more... advanced.

She grabbed the transmitter, which thankfully hadn't been broken too much, and threw Frenzy over her shoulder. She ran towards her front door just as it swung open, and she found her foyer being flooded with more men in suits. "Shit!" she screamed. She turned tail and ran for the back door. Once in the back yard, she ran to the gate and dropped down behind some bushes, watching as people ran into her house. She looked at her car, and realized she had to act fast.

She thankfully still had her keys in her pocket, and when she had a clear path, she sneaked in the shadows along the edge of their privacy fence until she reached the passenger side. She opened her back door slowly, and deposited the fallen robot and the transmitter in the back seat, and then climbed in and crawled over the console to the driver's seat. She closed her eyes.

_I have one shot at this_, she thought to herself. _This is probably the worst Hail Mary attempt ever, but... here goes_.

She started the car, which definitely attracted attention considering it had enough after market modifications to make it loud enough to set off sensitive car alarms. When flashlights hit her car, she threw the lights on, brights included, blinding the men as they ran out after her. She slammed it into first gear and whipped the car around, tearing through the front yard instead of using the driveway, and launched off the curb and into the street, slamming her exhaust on one of the speed bumps as she ripped out of the neighborhood.

She could hear sirens behind her, and there was even a helicopter, but she just tried to concentrate on driving. Maggie had been into a lot of rally racing in Australia as a girl, and her skills were coming in handy as she dipped off the main road and ran down a bike path in the woods. The helicopter was on her, but the government vehicles were simply not equipped to keep up. Maggie ran through gears like a professional, taking dangerous turns and twists, trying to lose the helicopter.

She pulled out of the woods finally after about twenty minutes of evasive driving, and looked around. Not even a siren, no lights, nothing. She guided the car onto the road, and slowly from one stop sign to the next. She wasn't far from the train yard. "We're almost there, we're almost to Barricade," she said softly, hands shaking horribly from adrenaline. The lack of sirens was both good and bad - either she'd lost them, or they were regrouping. She didn't have time to waste.

She sped back up to 55, and she was almost through the last intersection when the GMC Topkick truck ran the light and t-boned the Subaru, flipping it twice before it slid to a grinding halt on its side against the base of the stoplight.


	8. Suspended Reality

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Transformers the Movie, or the TV series, comics, or cartoons and am not in any way affiliated with Hasbro/Dreamworks or any of the other companies with rights to the Transformers, characters, and logos, et cetera. The only characters I own are the original characters.**

* * *

**Suspended Reality**

_"Blow out your candles, Maggie!" a voice said._

_Maggie turned around to see her parents standing at the kitchen table, and gesturing to a large birthday cake with the number seven written on it in blue icing and candles surrounding it. She blinked her eyes, feeling strange and heavy._

_"Come on, M&M, you can do it!" her father cheered. He always called her M&M, like the candy, because of her initials._

_Maggie smiled brightly and stood on her toes, taking a deep breath to blow out the candles. When she inhaled sharply, she cried out in pain, doubling over. Her parents still stood there, smiling at her and laughing, as little Maggie began to cough up gobs of blood on the floor, retching and struggling to breathe._

_Someone began calling her name, and it was very faint, and everything went black. There was silence, and then Maggie opened her eyes again. She was sitting in the hospital waiting room. She must've fallen asleep. She looked at her watch, and then stood up, tapping her feet to try and revive them. She had to have been sleeping for a while, but she felt so utterly drained._

_A grip on her arm made her turn to face her mother, who gave her a comforting pat. "I'm sure he'll be fine," she said._

_Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but a doctor in a pair of blue scrubs approached them. "Mrs. Madsen?" he asked, a clipboard in his hand._

_"Yes, that's me," her mother said, tucking graying blonde strands behind her ear. "How is my husband, did the surgery go as planned?" she asked. She looked so worn and tired._

_The doctor shook his head gently. "I'm sorry. We were unable to remove the blockage, and we lost him on the table. The hospital offers you condolences. There was nothing further we could do. I'm sorry," he said again. He excused himself very quickly, leaving the two women to face each other._

_"Dad's... dead?" Maggie said, not sure she was processing the information correctly._

_Her mother began speaking to her, but all Maggie could hear was static and noise, some horrible distortion that hurt her ears. She kept trying to move away, but her mother had grabbed her arm and clamped down, so much that it hurt, and Maggie began screaming and trying to push her away. It was ineffective - she couldn't get her mother off of her, and her mother began slamming her into the wall, screaming a strange, siren sort of yell._

_Maggie felt intense pain and a crushing sort of force. She could hear fighting, screaming, thunder, gunfire. 'Why can't I MOVE?' she thought desperately, trying to get out from wherever this dark place she was in. It was so cold, so utterly desolate. She wanted to come back so very badly._

* * *

Barricade had taken Maggie's advice, and shortly after she'd left, he'd decided to roll around the city and get some exercise, not that he actually needed it. He was on his way back shortly after sundown when he saw the helicopter circling nearby, and sped up, taking a back route to the train yard. When he turned the corner, he had to slam on his brakes before he nearly became part of the wreckage himself.

What he saw horrified him. He had never felt real fear, real terror before, but this was... Maggie's WRX was laying on the driver's side, propped up against the pole of the stoplight. There was broken glass, car parts, and worst of all, blood, scattered all across the pavement, glistening in the yellow lights of the street lamps as he slowly rolled forward. He couldn't sense any signs of life from inside the vehicle.

He looked around, not seeing any other vehicles in the immediate area. She'd been hit by something extremely large, and yet, there were no other pieces of another vehicle in the road, on the grass - not even a tiny shred of shrapnel connecting what hit her. He only knew of one thing that could do that, and transformed quickly. He needed to get Maggie out of the vehicle and see if there was even a chance she was still alive.

"Maggie!" he yelled as he hurried towards the overturned car. He had almost reached it when Ironhide began firing mercilessly at him, the heat rounds penetrating his armor, though thankfully missing anything vital. He was knocked over from the blast, and came to lay at the side of the WRX, able enough to see inside of it. He stared directly into Maggie's eyes as she lay, motionless, body half crushed by the dash of the car. He couldn't even sense a heartbeat. In the back, he saw Frenzy, splayed out across the seat, also not putting off any living frequencies.

He was filled with an emotion then that he had never experienced before. In his day, Barricade had felt anger and even sorrow, but he had never had a combination of both incredible loss and blind rage. He pushed himself up off the ground slowly as Ironhide strode towards him, his pace leisurely and his laugh rich and deep. Barricade felt dizzy as he rose, and he couldn't place on whether it was because he was injured or what was going through his mind at the moment.

"Sorry about your girlfriend, Decepticon, but let's face it - it never would have worked out anyways. I mean, for one, her boyfriend was working for Sector 7. This whole thing was just a trap to catch you," he sang, folding his massive arms as Barricade swayed in place.

"That isn't true, Autobot scum," he snarled. It couldn't be true. As much as he disliked Sam, the boy was genuine, and he could see it in Maggie, too. But who was he to get bent out of shape for being lied too, honestly? The entire hierarchy of Megatron was built on lies, on power and cunning, and in blood and pain. Who was he, really, to feel betrayed?

Ironhide could sense it as he stared his opponent down, and fed off of it. "Oh, yes it is. She led them right to you. Did you honestly think she was your friend? Barricade, come on. You've not been on Earth that long to start yearning for a functioning relationship. Humans have made you grow soft," he teased with a harsh chuckle.

"That's a load of space shit," he retorted. He was starting to feel it again, that anger building up inside him. "The girl had nothing to do with Sector 7 outside of this endeavor. She is innocent, and she was trying to help me to **leave**, not destroy the planet, so **please**, tell me where in the almighty Autobot creed does it say that you get to SMASH INTO INNOCENT HUMANS WHO AREN'T HARMING ANYTHING?"

"It isn't always so black and white, Barricade," he said with a methodical grin. "Perhaps Optimus follows the teachings of the straight and narrow, but I think we should have executed you all when we had the chance. I don't share his love for humans, least of all one who was trying to aid my ENEMY, so you'll excuse me if I have to cast my ballot as, 'Not giving a shit'. Now, if you'll step aside please, I need to ensure that there are no witnesses." He raised his blaster and aimed it at the vehicle.

"NO!" Barricade roared. He sprang forward, tackling Ironhide and throwing him down to the ground. Unlike Bumblebee, Ironhide was large, but for that he had sacrificed some level of agility and made up for it with weapons. If Barricade could disarm him, he was more than matched. He thrust a knee down into Ironhide's midsection, yanking him up simultaneously to head butt him with a disgusting crack. The round he'd fired had gone completely sideways, causing a huge explosion and a large crater in the road. Chunks of asphalt rained down on both of them as they wrestled.

"The Decepticon with a heart of gold!" he laughed, unphased by Barricade's onslaught. He was caught by surprise as his face was smashed, and snaked an arm around to grab him by the back, ripping him off of him and throwing him aside like a doll. Barricade slid several yards and then rolled to a stand.

"That's enough out of you," he threatened. He dug his feet into the ground as Ironhide brushed himself off. On the way into the air, Barricade had managed to grab a hold of Ironhide's weapon, and now had it safely hidden behind him for the moment.

"Or, what, Barricade? You'll tell on me? Please. You think they'd believe you over me?" He laughed again, and then reached for his blaster. "I'm just going to end it now while you still have some shred of dignity left." His hand patted against his hip, but the weapon had been removed. "What the --?"

He looked up as Barricade raised the blaster and fired several rounds directly at his head. There was a thunderous crash as Ironhide's body hit the ground, limp and lifeless.

Barricade flung the weapon from himself and ran back to the car, reaching down and prying the side of it open as carefully as he could.

"Maggie! Maggie!" he yelled, trying to see if there was anything, anyone home at all inside of her.

Everything was silent for a moment except the sound of distant sirens, and then Maggie's eyes blinked once. Slowly, but definitely.

"MAGGIE!" he screamed. He reached around the back and grabbed Frenzy, giving him a good zap with his own energy. The robot sprang to life, running around in circles on the pavement, his last memory still all he knew. He stopped suddenly when he realized he was no longer in the study with Maggie being shot at, and froze when he viewed the aftermath of the wreckage.

"!!!!!!!" he screamed.

"Help me get her to the hospital, Frenzy, or the last chance we have to get off of this rock is going to DIE," he boomed. He transformed back into the police vehicle after setting Maggie on the ground, and swung the back door open.

Maggie definitely had a broken femur. The bone was thrust directly through the top of her thigh, and there was a massive amount of blood on her midsection. One of her arms was definitely broken, probably multiple times, and she had various lacerations on her face from the glass. When Barricade had moved her, she had left a pool of it in the vehicle. She was barely breathing, and it came out in a strange gurgling sound. Barricade was almost positive she had internal injuries. He could even believe she was still alive now, but he couldn't concentrate on the new sensations he was feeling, he just needed her to survive, and that was more important than trying to sort himself out.

Frenzy tried to, as carefully as he could, lift her into the back seat, and Barricade aided him with the same tools he had used to terrify Sam before. They laid her across the back, and then Frenzy grabbed the very broken transmitter and jumped into the passenger seat.

"GOOOO!" he wailed, jumping up and down in the seat.

Barricade threw on every light and siren the car possessed, speeding out of the intersection and headed straight for the freeway. It was the fastest way he knew to get to St Mary's Hospital, and the best chance they had of saving Maggie's very waning life.


End file.
